Purchases 2.0 | January 2018

Today was a good day. My two youngest children were out of the house this morning and this mom got some free time. Rare, rare free time. So what did I do? Go grocery shopping sans enfants of course, got my nails done (don’t have a heart attack, it was just $20 bucks… this is the countryside not the GTA) and while sitting at Timmies bought some shares.

I had some cash laying around in a RRSP savings account. I don’t regularly contribute to it because it does not have an impact on our tax return. (We don’t earn much money, so a TFSA is a good fit) However, every year I contribute a small amount to repay the first time homebuyers plan we used to buy our first place.

This year I put that money in my Questrade RRSP, and plan to transfer the remaining amount from my RRSP savings account later on. So today I bought 115 shares of Plaza Retail REIT (PLZ.UN.TO). It came to just over $500, keeping my fees around 1%. Although I’ve never owned a REIT before, their dividend track record is pretty good (15 consecutive dividend increases!). Current dividend yield is 6.26%, and paid monthly at 0.0225 cents per share. I think I’ll add PLZ.UN.TO to my TFSA later this year. If I want to get my nails done every month for $20, I would need to own 889 shares in my TFSA. Not too shabby.

I’m not a big fan of RRSPs… but that’s a whole other story. I couldn’t just let that cash sit there in a savings account not even keeping up with inflation. At least it’s earning some cash. However, I’m not sure I should count these dividends towards my annual dividend income since I can’t use it if need be. I might just have to create a separate dividend tally for my RRSP. We shall see.